SEOUL Senior South Korean, U.S. and Japanese officials will meet in Tokyo next month to discuss policy on the Korean Peninsula, Reuters quoted a South Korean official as saying on Friday.

The meeting of the Trilateral Coordination and Oversight Group (TCOG) in early September comes amid a lengthy stall in North Korea's dealings with South Korea and the United States.

The three members of the group, set up to coordinate policies toward North Korea, will discuss recent developments in the North, including North Korean leader Kim Jong-il's visit to Russia, a South Korean diplomat said.

Kim was due back in Pyongyang on Sunday after a three-week train trip across Russia and back, his only known foreign travel as leader of the Communist North except two secretive trips to China.

Several weeks after the trilateral meeting in Tokyo, Chinese President Jiang Zemin is expected to visit North Korea in a trip that will be closely watched for its impact on diplomacy surrounding the Korean peninsula.

Some analysts in Seoul have suggested that Kim Jong-il's travels to Russia and China -- Pyongyang's patrons in the Cold War era -- are designed to forge a coalition to counter-balance the alliance between South Korea, Japan and the United States.

The TCOG gathering has added significance as an indicator that Seoul and Tokyo can insulate their cooperation on North Korea from thorny disputes over history, diplomats said.

Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi enflamed emotions in South Korea on Monday by visiting a shrine which honors war criminals among Japan's war dead.

Ties are also strained by a new Japanese history textbook which critics say whitewashes Japan's World War II aggression and its 1910-45 colonial rule of Korea. 07-40-06.H26 ' '-